Anybody who knows me knows that I have a deep admiration for the work that IGs do and that I have done a lot of work/commenting on the fiscal and corruption problems in Baltimore.  Well, this past Monday, the Baltimore City IG released their annual report.  The report identifies $7 million in wasteful spending. In comparison, the 2020 report outlined $3 million in identified savings. Ethical and fiscal concerns are rife as the report notes that, “[c]ity employees and citizens made over 700 calls to the [Office of the Inspector Genera (OIG)] hotline and the Investigations team delivered 36 reports.” For example, obscure city offices such as the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA) regularly fail to oversee operations, costing taxpayers millions of dollars. BOPA’s failed oversight over their vertical banner program cost taxpayers $450,000. Banners hanging on city-owned light poles that should have been taken down in February 2020 were still hanging in September 2020, resulting in significant missed revenue opportunities for the city. Clearly something has to change when the city can’t even take down banners on time.  Another crazy example from the report, “A Baltimore Police Department (BPD) officer got the city to cover expenses for three surgeries, physical therapy, numerous medical appointments, and several months of accident/medical leave—all totaling more than $332,000—stemming from ten separate worker’s compensation claims between 2007 and 2019. An anonymous tipster disclosed to the OIG this same officer spent parts of 2017 and 2018 skydiving in South Carolina and Florida and, while there, signed medical waivers indicating they had no back injuries or orthopedic problems.”

 

The report’s release comes as the IG continues to be embroiled in governance disputes with the municipal government, which has consistently spent beyond its means in recent years.  Despite the breakneck pace of the IG’s work, Baltimore city leadership has bizarrely called for curtailing the government watchdog’s independence.  The latest Annual Report is further proof that the IG should remain independent and not politicized as some leaders in Baltimore want to do. With a budget of $2.3 million, the IG identified $7 million in potential savings. That is a savings of $3 for every dollar spent, an impressive return. Baltimore public officials have repeatedly promised their constituents that new city leadership would get Baltimore back on track and offer a better and brighter future for Charm City. But, if the IG’s 2021 annual report is any indication, the city has a long way to go to get past decades of deteriorating trust between leadership and the public. 

 

I want to give special recognition to head of the IG’s office, Isabel Cumming. From her days as an Assistant State Prosecutor with the Maryland State Prosecutor’s Office, she helped take down former Comptroller Jacqueline McLean.  As the IG she investigated the infamous former Mayor Catherine Pugh. As soon as Cumming assumed the role of IG in 2018, she made clear that, “nobody is off limits. Overtime situations, theft of time. Purchase cards. There are so many areas that need to be looked at…I love going after white collar criminals.” Baltimore city taxpayers desperately need that tenacity in going after waste, fraud and abuse.  TPA was so impressed with her work that we gave her the Profile in Courage in September 2020.

 

Baltimore city public officials have tried their best to undermine the IG’s independence and set up an advisory board that would monitor the watchdog’s every move. Baltimore’s leadership needs to let the IG do her job and continue to make Charm City a better place.

 

 

 

 

I am a political scientist, not a “real” scientist, so it’s beyond my expertise to wade too deeply into climate science.  But, another report on global warming was released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), titled Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. The report declares that humans are causing the planet to warm and that unless there are drastic changes made today, global warming may reach a point of no return. What is interesting is that a notable energy source is missing from the conversation to address climate change, nuclear energy. The report calls for major action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, focusing on the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2). As with every report on global warming, media and policymakers make drastic calls for countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) tweeted that Congress “must take bold action NOW to combat climate change.” The Sierra Club noted that their followers “may be feeling some combination of overwhelmed, anxious, sad, despairing” after reading the report, but to not despair. Now “is the time to fight” and to “act when our members [of Congress] are back home to hear from their constituents for August Recess.”

 

If policymakers truly want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we must continue to transition away from fossil fuel use. Unfortunately, policymakers seem to promote only one type of energy – renewable energy such as solar and wind. Yet, policymakers persistently ignore a massive power source that emits little to zero CO2 emissions: nuclear power.  Despite a few headline-grabbing nuclear incidents, nuclear power is a relatively safe power source. On September 3, 1948 – 73 years ago – electric energy was first produced by a nuclear reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Nuclear energy is also an overwhelmingly environmentally-friendly energy resource. Nuclear power plants “produce no greenhouse gas emissions during operation” and during the course of its lifetime, a nuclear power plant “produces about the same amount of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions per unit of electricity as wind, and one-third of the emissions per unit of electricity when compared with solar.”  The Department of Energy (DOE) has called nuclear energy “America’s work horse.” In 2021, DOE noted that nuclear energy has been providing “consistent, reliable, carbon-free power to millions of Americans” for six decades. According to the DOE, “nuclear energy has by far the highest capacity factor of any other energy sources.” Indeed, in 2020, nuclear power plants produced “maximum power more than 93% of the time during the year.” For comparison, wind and solar energy’s capacity factor for 2020 were at 35.4 percent and 24.9 percent, respectively. Essentially, in 2020, nuclear power plants were “2.5 to 3.5 times more reliable than wind and solar plants.” In short, a 2014 report by the Brookings Institute found that policies that favor wind and solar against hydro, nuclear, and natural gas “are a very expensive and inefficient way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.”

 

Should lawmakers truly want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, energy policies must be rooted in sound science. As the former Oak Ridge National Laboratory administrator and nuclear physicist Alvin M. Weinberg remarked in 1976 (the last year that the United States had ordered a nuclear power plant to be built), "We nuclear people have made a Faustian Bargain with society. On the one hand we offer-in the catalytic nuclear burner (i.e., the breeder)-an inexhaustible source of energy…But the price that we demand of society for this magical source is both a vigilance and a longevity of our social institutions that we are quite unaccustomed to.” The country shouldn’t be rejecting nuclear power because of isolated, headline-grabbing issues, but rather should embrace the amazing technology while learning from past lessons.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

August 13, 2021: Townhall.com ran TPA’s op-ed, “With Latest Climate Change Report, Now Is Time for Nuclear Energy.”

 

August 13, 2021: Inside Sources ran TPA’s op-ed, “FCC Commissioner Carr Speaks on Internet Connectivity Efforts in Cuba.”

 

August 15, 2021:  Lindsey Stroud, TPA’s Consumer Center Director, was quoted by theWeekly Technology Times (Pakistan) in their  story, “Dirty Ashtray Award For Who!”

 

August 16, 2021:  Filter ran TPA’s op-ed, “How the UK Is Allowing Vapes to Save Hundreds of Thousands of Lives.”

 

August 16, 2021:  WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about Buy American provisions in the infrastructure bill.

 

August 16, 2021:  KOMO News ABC4 (Seattle, Wa.)  mentioned TPA in their article, “Infrastructure Bill Allocates $40 Billion For Government-Owned Internet.”

 

August 16, 2021:  WZTV Fox17 (Nashville, Tenn.) mentioned TPA in their article,  “Infrastructure bill allocates $40 billion for government-owned internet.”

August 18, 2021:  Townhall.com ran TPA’s op-ed, “JUUL Gets Hosed for Providing Research, Michael Bloomberg Does It All the Time.”

 

August 19, 2021:  WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about the Baltimore City Inspector General’s Annual Report.

 

August 19, 2021:  I appeared on WBOB 600 AM (Jacksonville, Fla.) to talk about the $3.5 trillion budget bill.

August 20, 2021: The Federalist ran TPA's op-ed, "Higher Taxes On Home Deliveries Are The Last Thing Americans Need Right Now"